Colorado Ski Town Votes to Ban Pot Shops to Appease Conservative Guests
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But one Vail councilman wants to allow marijuana bars.
VAIL, Colo. – Officials in one of the nation’s most popular ski towns recently voted to ban retail marijuana shops, citing concern about damage to its high-end tourism brand. But one Vail Town Council member voted against the ban and wants a new state law allowing for pot bars.
Greg Moffet, a Republican owner of an advertising firm, said Vail is doing more damage to its brand with tourists from conservative states and Latin America by not providing public gathering places for the legal consumption of retail marijuana.
He likens the situation to liquor laws, which allow for retail outlets where booze can be taken home and consumed but also permit bars and restaurants to sell alcohol that can be consumed in a social setting.
Colorado’s retail marijuana laws prohibit public consumption, including in bars and restaurants, and essentially limit consumption to private households. Even Vail’s many hotel and lodging properties ban marijuana consumption the way tobacco use is prohibited under Colorado’s Clean Indoor Air Act.
“If you buy [marijuana] and you’re staying in a hotel, you don’t have any place to consume it, so you are going to consume it someplace where you’re not supposed to,” Moffet said. “From a brand standpoint, I think we’re saying one thing and doing another.”
Moffet does not favor retail marijuana sales right in town, but he cast the lone dissenting vote last week when the town council decided by a 6-1 margin to approve Ordinance No. 10, which requires a second reading on Aug. 4. Moffet said Vail’s existing zoning laws are already adequate to ban retail shops in town, so he called the new ordinance redundant.
Just four miles away in the unincorporated residential area of Eagle-Vail, Eagle County has approved several pot shops along a commercial strip now dubbed “The Green Mile,” prompting some concern in the community that marijuana will now be more readily available for underage consumers. But Vail is a resort area which, in part, caters to a clientele looking to party hard.
Vail Mayor Andy Daly said he’s heard from the resort town’s international clientele, who make up about 15 percent of the resort town’s economy, that the state’s legal pot sales make them uncomfortable. That’s especially true, he said, for Mexican guests who value the safety and security of letting their older children roam free in Colorado, which they can’t do at home.
“If you lose 10 to 15 percent of your best customers, it’s going to have a very detrimental impact on the community, both summer and winter,” Daly said. “My experience with them has been very anecdotal, but it has been a pretty resounding 100 percent against the sale of marijuana.”
Moffet said he essentially agrees with Daly but points out those guests now are subject to public consumption by other tourists who legally purchase pot but then illegally smoke it in public, either right in town in public facilities such as parking structures or on the ski slopes.
“If, on the other hand, there was a bar . . . where you could go and pay your 10 bucks for the equivalent of a really nice gin and tonic and be handed a vape [smoke-free electronic pipe] and consume it on premises and walk out when you’re done, nobody’s the wiser, nobody’s offended, nobody’s children see you do it, just like when you drink a gin and tonic in a bar,” Moffet said.
That might also take some pressure off ski company officials who have to try to enforce the federal pot prohibition on leased public lands. The U.S. Forest Service owns most of the land under Vail’s ski slopes, so public consumption is illegal under both state and federal law.
“It is not legal to use marijuana publicly, on lifts or on USFS property; therefore, it is not legal on Vail Mountain,” Vail Resorts officials blogged. “We also do not permit the consumption of marijuana in any of our facilities or premises under our control and we will enforce this vigorously.”
Moffet would like to see the state legislature next session allow for marijuana bars across Colorado the way Denver voters may be asked to do in November. There’s currently a petition drive in the state’s largest city to allow for the uniform permitting of pot bars, and Moffet said that should be a statewide push.
“I’ve talked to the lobbyists in the pot industry and suggested this, but I’m one guy in Vail and I have no political muscle at all,” Moffet said. “This is something that the industry is going to have to get behind it and push it through the legislature. We have not finished this experiment in my book.”
David O. Williams is a journalist based in Avon, Colorado.
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